By Iain Mills

BEIJING – Harbin, provincial capital of Heilongjiang province in northeast China, is most famous for its European architecture and ice festival, when huge structures are carved out of frozen blocks and adorned with lights.

However, a less pleasant history lurks in the city’s southern Pingfang district. This otherwise unremarkable suburb has grown up around the former headquarters of Unit 731, Imperial Japan’s notorious chemical warfare testing unit, and the complex remains largely untouched, a low-key memorial to a truly gruesome history.

Local authorities have been attempting to upgrade and expand the site for some time, and following a rejection from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to afford the site “World Heritage Status” last month, they have promised to redouble their efforts.

In the delicate and symbol-laden realm of Sino-Japanese relations, the handling and response to the site’s redevelopment could shed light on the wider evolution of bilateral and regional relations.

Unit 731 – or to give it its Japanese name, the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army – was the headquarters of the Japanese army’s chemical and biological warfare program from 1935 to 1945.

Among the unit’s activities was human testing; it conducted experiments on over 10,000 live subjects, including vivisection, weaponry, germ and chemical warfare tests, and other biological experiments. After World War II, most of those who worked at Unit 731 were granted an amnesty by the occupying American administration in Tokyo in return for complete access to their methods and data – many even embarked on successful careers in Japan and the United States. Most victims were Chinese, but Russians, Mongolians, Koreans and Western prisoners were also used in experiments.

The existence of Unit 731 remained unknown beyond those involved and a small circle of high-ranking officials until a chance finding in a Tokyo bookstore in 1984. A student rummaging through the papers of a deceased military official found war-time reports of studies into tetanus using involuntary human subjects at the Epidemic Prevention Department. Initially, both the US and Japanese governments denied all knowledge, but by 1993 the US State Department yielded to considerable pressure and declassified the relevant documents.

These revealed that hundreds of separate experiments using human subjects had taken place at the Harbin headquarters as well as a network of affiliated units at locations throughout mainland China. In 2002, the Japanese government admitted it has carried out human anatomical experiments, but declined to acknowledge any other activities, and it still refuses to refer to the unit by name.

The unit’s former headquarters remain essentially untouched. Set back from the roadside in a non-descript suburb of Harbin, sandwiched between a school and the identical concrete tenements of a Chinese residential compound, the site is an unassuming two-story brick building housing a small museum and exhibition.

A discrete sign in Chinese characters only marks the entrance, where Number 2 Guardhouse now serves as a ticket office. In the complex grounds are the ruins of half a dozen additional structures, including the incinerator, while the shapes of other buildings can still be made out in the grass. The faded photographs and low-budget feel create a different kind of solemnity to the monumental grandeur of many comparable Chinese historical memorials, such as the vast Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall on the site of a mass grave near the city’s Jiangdong Gate, or even the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing.

Unit 731 has remained remarkably low key, both in terms of global awareness and its potential to cause turbulence in Sino-Japanese relations.

This general silence was broken in 2005, when 180 relatives of Unit 731 victims sought retrospective compensation from the Japanese High Court in Tokyo. Shortly before the verdict, local authorities in Harbin announced a US$62.5 million redevelopment for the Pingfang complex, and their intention to register an application for it to be granted UNESCO world heritage status.

The scheme would have substantially enlarged the site, destroying the neighboring school and several apartment blocks, as well as greatly increasing visitor numbers. The museum’s curator, Wang Peng, stated at the time that “our goal is to build it into a world-class war memorial and educate people all over the world. This is not just a Chinese concern. It is a concern of humanity.” Tokyo did not respond publicly to the announcement, but the compensation claims were dismissed two months later. [1]

Last month, state media reported that UNESCO had rejected the application, and the authorities would therefore be “stepping up efforts to meet the [world heritage status] requirements”.[2]

There has been a steady flow of domestic media reports on the Pingfang complex since the beginning of the year, suggesting the central government supports the renewed application. This began in February when a Chinese researcher released the names of four Koreans allegedly executed at the site, [3] and the chatter has continued since the rejection announcement.

Precise details of the revised proposal have yet to emerge, but given the site’s own history and other frequent controversies surrounding the treatment and telling of history by Tokyo and Beijing, it is clear that any development at the Pingfang complex has the potential to become a new symbolic front in Sino-Japanese relations.

As China’s national strength and standing increase, how the story of the Pingfang complex plays out will provide evidence of whether Chinese propagandists are willing to move away from the narratives of victimhood and humiliation that they have traditionally deployed in such situations. Historical sites play a significant role in Chinese international relations, not only due to pervasive nationalist sentiment, but also because, as sociologist Jacques de Lisle has remarked in his essay “One World, Different Dreams”, “Chinese political discourse remains highly attuned to metaphor and symbol,” a statement also valid for other East Asian nations.

Knowing that nationalism can help reify its own domestic support and legitimacy, the government has often let nationalist sentiment reach fever pitch to meets its own domestic goals. However, in a new era of international interconnectivity, Communist Party strategists have become increasingly reluctant to incite this kind of response.

The amelioration of ties with Tokyo, particularly since the end of the Junichiro Koizumi administration in Japan in 2005, has been one of the Hu Jintao government’s most significant achievements. Increasing bilateral trade and economic exchanges have created a greater range of shared interests for Tokyo and Beijing. [4]

The high point in bilateral ties remains the agreement to jointly exploit undersea gas reserves around the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku/ Islands in 2008, but against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, this remains an isolated peak rather than part of the stronger upward trend in high-profile cooperation for which some had hoped.

Debate also continues over the extent of Japanese destruction and killing during its occupation of Chinese territory, although respected historians from both sides are now engaged in healthy academic dialogue. Anti-Japanese sentiment remains in both popular and elite discourses, and anti-Japanese protests or crimes remain frequent occurrences; and this is to say nothing of how China is perceived by some quarters of Japanese society.

As Bu Ping, director of the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), puts it, “Sino-Japanese relations are currently quite stable, but some historical questions remain and may have been temporarily covered, not fundamentally resolved.” Bu, who is also Chinese director of the most comprehensive Sino-Japanese joint research project into Unit 731 to date, makes a convincing case for increasing the visibility of the Pingfang complex and expanding Unit 731 scholarship, maintaining that it can “open new horizons and promote new understandings” in Sino-Japanese relations.

“There is no point shying away from sensitive issues, because sooner or later they will explode and come to the surface, perhaps causing irreparable damage,” he argued, adding “both in Japan and China, Unit 731 has not been thoroughly enough understood.”
The relationship between historical sites with modern social and political discourses has long been a problematic one in Asia, and burying these differences is a prerequisite for strengthening regionalization in the area. Bu’s argument that “only mutual understanding can overcome national borders” is compelling, but the ongoing campaign to turn the home of Unit 731 into a world heritage site is bound to throw up some harsh truths and strong emotions.

The approach and management of both nations could be an important bellwether in understanding exactly how stable and mature their relationship has become, as well as the trajectory of East Asian cooperation as a whole.

Notes
1. Japanese court rejects germ warfare damages, New York Times, July20, 2005 2. Harbin pushes to list Unit 731 Museum as World Heritage, Global Times, May 14, 2010 3. Identities of Unit 731 Victims Unearthed, The Chosun IIBO, Aug 3, 2005 4. The Paradox of Sino-Japanese Relations, ISN

Iain Mills is a Beijing-based freelance writer specializing in the Chinese political economy, who can be reached atsigmills@hotmail.com